Programming greater productivity
At the most fundamental level, the key to keeping costs in check – and thus achieving the organisation’s sustainability goals while also securing best value – is to boost productivity.
The right blend of best practice, expertise and technology can make a game-changing impact on a programme’s productivity levels – enabling works to be completed quicker, better, and more sustainably. Tools and techniques worth considering include:
Make it modular
Modular techniques can deliver higher quality projects
Off-site construction technology is rightly seen as a productivity game-changer. Used right, modular techniques can deliver higher quality projects more quickly, safely and cost effectively than conventional, on-site construction.
They reduce the time on site and require fewer people, thus reducing the risk of cost and time overruns and limiting exposure to mid-project rises in input costs.
As part of the Mayor of London’s Retrofit Accelerator for Homes, Turner and Townsend is working alongside Energiesprong UK as the social housing and construction sectors team up to deliver an Innovation Partnership and create a retrofit modular market that will slash the cost of ultra-energy-efficient home retrofit.
Lean into lean
Lean thinking is a management philosophy that embeds efficiency and flexibility into a project team’s structure and processes. In capital programmes, it can be used to save time and labour by engaging the maximum number of people in delivering value.
In practical terms this means ensuring the right skills are on site at the right time, and that skilled contractors spend all their working time productively, rather than waiting for materials or information.
Used correctly, lean management can streamline project processes and reduce waste, delays and rework by ensuring work is done right, first time.
Lean management can streamline project processes
Procure with precision
Measurement of a built asset’s total carbon impact need not wait until its operational life begins
Project leaders can only manage what they can measure, and measurement of a built asset’s total carbon impact need not wait until its operational life begins.
Upfront embodied carbon is a measure of how much carbon is generated from the ‘cradle to completion’ of the asset. In practical terms, this means quantifying the carbon emissions produced during the manufacture and transport of all building materials and components, as well as during their on-site assembly.
Turner & Townsend’s cost management specialists have developed a carbon calculator tool that allows clients to understand the forecast amount of embodied carbon in their buildings. When used at the early design phase of a project and in conjunction with a cost planning approach, the carbon calculator allows clients to make truly informed decisions – and then strike the optimum balance between cost, value and environmental priorities during the creation of the asset.
Driving better delivery through digital
There is no shortage of digital tools now available to enable the design, procurement, and delivery of construction programmes. Vendor and solution selection has never been more important. Nor has the system thinking needed to bring these capabilities to bear onto major programmes, delivering social value as well as better environmental and economic outcomes.
The processing power of the software tools we now have was once unthinkable, and programme teams should use them to establish a multi-dimensional, digital environment right from the start, in which performance, commercial, sustainability and impact metrics are agreed and standardised.
Above all, programme leaders must foster a digital-first culture across the supply chain, in which financiers, designers, engineers, suppliers and the crucial ‘handover to asset’ operators are given access to ultra-detailed, live and interrogable data that empowers them to collaborate in real-time, all of the time.
Programme leaders must foster a digital-first culture across the supply chain
Aligning goals through a programmatic approach
Net-zero should be viewed as a business opportunity to be seized
Sustainability targets and the quest for lower opex, or optimum project performance, should not be seen as separate goals. While many clients currently face multiple and overlapping challenges – from inflationary pressure to rising interest rates and recessionary anxiety – these can, and should, be tackled in conjunction with their net-zero commitments.
Rather than trying to ‘firefight’ individual problems, programme teams should combine agile pragmatism with a programmatic approach to divide and conquer complex issues, increase productivity and align their sustainability ambitions with the search for best value. Net-zero should be viewed as a business opportunity to be seized, rather than a burden to be borne.
Despite the present challenging environment, sustainability and the push for net-zero need not be sacrificed on the altar of lowering cost.
Clients should instead use the tactics outlined above to boost productivity and redefine what success looks like, and above all make better-informed decisions that strike the right balance between short-term cost, long-term value and enduring environmental priorities.
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